Paracord Rescue Belt (Let’s call it the Emergency Weave)

OK. Here it is. I thought this up the other day, but maybe it’s been done before, so let me know if you’ve see it or something like it. This is the one I initially did, but I’ll do another one below with 2 different colours to make it easier to see the process.

Basically, it’s a weave that you can undo very quickly, and doesn’t take too long to build, after you get the idea for what’s important in doing it. It doesn’t stretch too much at all, and is scaleable, so you could make a braclet, a door mat, or some sweet sheets for your bed, if you’ve got some time and 10,000′ of extra paracord.

OK. To make this belt you’ll need:

1.) About 28 inches per inch of finished belt(so for my 49″ belt it has about 120′ of cord in it),

2.) A belt buckle, and,

3.) Somewhere to work, like a couple bar clamps and a bungie cord on a table. I have also made a bracelet with this pattern by clamping the non-buckle end(…or ‘other’ buckle end, I guess…) to the table and just keeping it pulled towards myself. Whatever works, maybe even hanging it from the top of a door might work. Here’s the rig I worked on for the demo(which is obviously shorter than the actual belt, for demo purposes):

Now! This belt will shrink about 20% from it’s initial length, so for mine I started out at 59″, and it ended up at 49″. THE BUNGIE CORD IS IMPORTANT! The way to end up with a nice tight weave is to let the belt shorten as you weave it. The bungie holds it in place, just tight enough for you to work on.

For my belt I used 8 down-and-back runs to get a finished product just over 1 1/2 inches wide. To do this, I ran the cord off the spool, through the buckle, down to the bar-clamp and back, 8 times, then tied the end off to the buckle like this(or you could use a small zip-tie);

After you get your runs in place and all even, and if you need to, (as in you only have 100′ lengths but need a belt longer than 40″), this would be a good place to tie your two pieces together;

To start weaving, you’ll want to get ahold of a pen or a rod of some kind, something to feed back and forth between the runs of cord. I found that something with a flat vs pointed end works well. Feed it back and forth between the runs to cross the lines all over to the other sides and push it firmly towards the buckle. The way to get the weave nice and tight is to pack these crossovers towards the buckle, getting as many as you can into the length of your belt. You can grab the two groups of lines every once in a while after you’ve crossed them, and pull them apart to get them nice and tight. You’ll probably have to check the end you’re not working on almost every time, to be sure your lines don’t get crossed or messed up.

Next, feed a loop of cord up between the lines to the left of the pen, then flip it past the pen to the right;

Pull the pen out, weave it back between the lines the other way again, and feed another loop up through;

Hook the first loop over the second and snug it up. Try and watch whic way the first loop is twisted, so it lies flat on the top of the belt. Do not worry about the tension right now because you”ll have to go back and tighten it after you get to the end and take it off the rig anyway. All you need to do at this point is get as many crossings in as you can by packing them in towards the buckle.

Keep going with this,

When you get close to the end, it will get harder to the point where you’ll have to remove it from the rig and work on the table;

Try and keep it tight to the right. The pen actually helps here, since you can feed the loop through if you tuck it into the end of the pen.

This is how I finished mine off, but I’m not 100% sold on how I did it, so whatever you think looks good will probably work.

Don’t cut it yet! Yon need to go back to the buckle end and snug up the crossing loops. Start working the line through, maybe a little tighter than it will be finished, and pull the belt out straight after each crossing loop is snugged up. If your belt looks like it’s curving towards the top, maybe your tension is a bit too much, so loosen off a bit.

That’s it! After you do it once or twice, a belt takes maybe an hour and a half or less.

Here’s a bracelet I made too following the same pattern.

Maybe I’ll work on those sheets next…let me know if you have any problems or ideas!

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Awesome, made one yesterday and it turned out really nice! I have one question though. You state “Don’t cut it yet! Yon need to go back to the buckle end and snug up the crossing loops.” I couldn’t figure out how to weave that final part and just left it there. The belt does not seem affected, so why and how do you do that?

That is awesome! The picture right above where it says “don’t cut it yet” is how I finished it, but there’s no right answer, just whatever works. In mine, you can see I ran the running end singe strand through the last loop and then back down, to hold it. There is a better picture of tightening the crossings here, https://mobiobione.wordpress.com/paracord-belt-with-caribiner-buckle-and-d-ring/ , so when you get it tight the way you like it, you can finish how you think best.

Oh! If you mean they are getting flipped over each other down away from where you are working, maybe try something like a chip bag clip(on one of my other pages…), or a hair clip, and check that they are straight every time you do a crossing

Do you know what would really help with pulling the loops thru is a crochet hook. It would be quick and easier it would seem. On the ITS website there’s a gal that crochets paracord
for storage and it’s quick looks very nice and does she.

Yeah! Very good idea. On one of my pages here you can see me use a crochet hook to make the belt’s running end holder loop. I didn’t use it for the belt as it seemed that the jig holding the belt allowed for quicker assembly without it, on most of the crossings, anyway. Generally, if it works, use it all day long!

Well, you can forego the loops, and use two crossing lines, one from either side, and just run them back and forth, then it will be symmetrical, but it won’t come apart anywhere near as easy…I suppose you could do the same thing but still do the loops top and bottom, but then there’d be four pieces cord though each weave, making for a bigger belt…maybe I’ll try a prototype sometime.

Scott, I saw your comment and wanted you to know I am using this pattern to make a dog collar. I make loops at both ends and weave them for a symmetrical look. I know it comes out just as easy because I had to start over after I realized it was shrinking more than I had accounted for. Hope this helps you out.

Excellent! A practical math question!
It looks like there is 6 down-and-back runs for every inch width of belt width, and a crossing every half inch, so for a finished belt of say 50 inches, that is;
3 inches X (6 runs X 2(down-and-back)) X 50 X (Pi/2) = 2827 inches, which is 235 feet just for the long runs! The Pi/2 is because the runs don’t end up straight, but weave back and forth, in a half circle kind of way.
Then you add the crossings which are 2 per inch, and the 3 inch width plus lets say another inch per crossing, to loop around the next cross, so 50 X 2 X 4 = 400 inches, which is 33 feet, added to our 235, is a minimum of 270’! This makes sense, as my 1.5-ish inch belt is around 120′ or cord.

Thanks for the great howto I made one from blue and black paracord a few tips id give to anyone attempting to make one is to be sure to give enough length as it does shrink down a fair bit while weaving I started with 60″ and my belt ended up being 50″ long I have a 46″ waist so it JUST fits and is hard to start.

my belt uses 70′ of black and 24′ of blue paracord before I tightened the loops up it used almost 40′ of blue. My belt ended up 1.25″ wide

as the article states its not important to get the loops very tight on the first pass but it is important to get as many of them as possible by sliding each one over as tight as possible.

Also when doing the last few weaves near the end they don’t need to be super tight like when making other paracord bracelets etc, its a very forgiving weave. After my last loop was almost 1/4″ of space and im glad i didn’t try to force one more loop through as this ended up being perfect once everything was tightened up

I would also advise against using a belt buckle with two pins as it makes it impossible to get on… I ended up cutting one clip off mine and re-centering the left over one by removing it and putting it back on

These buckles are 2″ wide, but since the weave is scalable, you could use more or less runs of cord back and forth to make it whatever size you want. Also, check out the link below for the 3.0 belt, and see the continuous loop of the same weave for the holder for the running end of the belt.

Looks to me like this technique, generally, which I think is in one way so obvious that it must have been done by more people. But then genius always lies in simplicity. You took it definitely to another level and the technique with the looping of the running cord and making it very workable with the “jig”! Great idea and tutorial!!